Borrow or rent equipment, tools, and reusable goods from your neighbors through the new NeighborGoods site. Instead of buying a specialized item, first check to see if you can save your money (and storage space) and get it on loan from a neighbor.

Since the NeighborGoods site is new, there might not be many items yet available in your community. If you’re interested in building up your community, don’t be shy about spreading the word to your friends and neighbors. The more people using the system increases the likelihood that you’ll find what you need.

8 Comments for “NeighborGoods helps you find specific items to rent or borrow”

Another great site with a similar purpose is Freecycle.org. There are chapters all over the country! Check with your local chapter’s administrator before asking to borrow/lend as some groups do or do not allow borrowing, mostly to protect the lender. (Mine has a separate sub-group for borrowing/lending, local business recommendations, etc.) Check it out! I’ve given away on Freecycle many posessions that were too good to throw away but that I didn’t want to try to sell or donate… It always feels good knowing my old coffeemaker is helping a neighbor’s daughter through college. 🙂

I have a snowblower that would clear the surrounding homes quickly. But … isn’t there always one of those … I want to use it first after a 30 inch deep snowfall. I doubt my neighbors will want to wait. And who fixes it after it gets busted up by someone who is less mechanically inclined?

In theory, this idea sounds great! We used to generously lend out tools, equipment (etc) to neighbors and friends but have completely stopped doing this. People seem to mis-treat or just be careless with things that don’t belong to them. We got back too many items damaged and broken. We even had a neighbor try to cover up/hide the damage he did to a piece of equipment! Sigh. Sorry if this sounds cynical but it has been our unfortunate experience. We are the opposite…if we borrow something, we treat it better than our own! We feel special responsibility since it is not ours. If something brakes while we are using it, we let the owner know and WE repair it. For example, we borrowed a power washer and the wand broke so we bought a new wand.

I think all of these services are really interesting. It’d be nice to see this really take hold. I’ve actually used a newer site that I think is still closed called snapgoods.com (invite code from friend). My experience was good mostly because they made a point to make me feel safe and show me exactly how they were protecting my stuff (deposit, etc). I think this is key. My stuff came back in great shape.

On Neighborgoods you also have the option of being a “verified” user which means you put in your credit card or checking account information; lenders can specify a deposit I believe and can also choose to only lend to verified users of the site… so it sounds like a similar system to snapgoods.com.

Of course you can choose not to be verified but that might make lenders less inclined to lend to you!

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